Independent Dialogue
Geographical focus:
Mexico
Main findings
Table 1: "Education on nutritious foods and health", ignorance about the comprehensive and multifactorial vision of food systems was identified as a central problem, which has three main causes: the first is crystallized information (that is, little diffused), that it does not reach all levels or contexts mainly due to problems of access, distribution, and infrastructure; the second cause is the stigmatization of food and dietary systems, caused by the bad habits from the psychological, practical and experience, and the third cause is the abandonment of farming practices or regional practices,
... Read more caused mainly by the transformation of socioeconomic systems, a decontextualized nutritional education and the abandonment and ignorance of sustainable practices such as backyard production and family production systems, such as the cornfield. The greatest effects of this main problem are the lack of accessibility to holistic knowledge, disconnection, decontextualization and eating disorders and environmental deterioration. Table 2: "Peasants and food producers as a fundamental link in food systems", a structural problem of production and consumption systems was identified (production with an economic objective leaving aside the social objective), due to three main causes: the first is the invisibility and devaluation of the role of peasants in the value, production and education chains, the second is the existence of a broken, individualized and non-collective peasant social fabric and the third is low access to financing and technological innovation. The main effects of this problem are inappropriate current public policies on local agriculture or poor small producers as well as generational and gender gap for access to land. Table 3: “The supply, demand and distribution of local food”, the lack of adequate spaces in quantity and characteristics to sell local agricultural products was identified as the main problem, this is because globalization benefits large global supply chains and it excludes local food systems, also because there is little political will, in addition to unequal quota charges to sell and a few knowledge about food systems; therefore, the main effects of this problem are two, producers waste their local products, lack of spaces that make local production visible, which ending up in of a food dependency. Table 4: "Innovation processes in food production", it was identified as the main problem that innovation in food has an economic objective, so it is not proposed as an objective to meet the needs of the entire population, this is due to the following causes: lack of regulation in the production of food, a culture of production for profit in the preparation of food that leaves out other segments of the most vulnerable population; and finally lack of innovation adapted to the specific local needs of the towns and regions of Mexico, which translate into the absence of nutritious and quality local food and the increase in the consumption of ultra-processed products from global markets, this has the effect compared with than the general population, mainly those with the most limited resources, present problems of malnutrition (malnutrition, overweight and obesity) and food deserts in colonies and outskirts populations. And finally, in table 5 "Diversity and gender perspective in food systems", it was found that the problem is that commercial agricultural production is mainly male task and this conception is maintained despite the growing participation of women, we found five main causes: the first is that the contributions of women in production, food and nutrition are not properly recognized, the second is that the potential / capability of women to produce food is not recognized, the third reason is that women have much less access to land ownership than men, the fourth reason is that women do not have the same time as men to dedicate themselves to productive activities, and the last reason is that women are not empowered in a significant way. This problem has the following effects: The perpetuation of machismo, the exclusion of women in decision-making, the loss of opportunity to improve biodiversity, nutrition and resilience faced due to external factors, and the decline in the health of people and ecosystems. Read less
Action Track(s): 1, 2, 3, 4
Keywords: Governance, Human rights, Innovation, Policy